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A Win-Win Proposal to Fix Social Security

By Tyler Watts | Mar 19 2025
Everyone knows Social Security is broke and broken. According to the latest OASDI Trustees Report, Social Security has been paying out more than its total revenue (payroll taxes and trust fund) since 2021, and the latest projections have the Social Security trust fund depleted by 2033. After that date, it will only pay 79% of ...

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Social Security: Flawed from the Start

By David Henderson | Mar 14 2025

When I posted on Social Security as a Ponzi scheme on March 11, I didn’t expect the degree of interest I got. It also led to a discussion of what to do now that we’re in a mess. So I’ve decided to post the rest of my chapter of The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s .. MORE

Featured Comment

Even if one grants that foreign countries should chip in for US naval patrols, tariffs won’t accomplish that goal. Tariffs are imposed on Americans, not foreigners. Americans who already pay taxes for the largest military..

Warren Platts, March 16

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Economic and Political Philosophy

Why Methodological Cosmopolitanism?

By Jon Murphy | Mar 25, 2025 | 5

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all people on the planet are part of a global community.  The philosophy of cosmopolitanism is very broad, sometimes advocating universal rules, or that we should all have the same partiality to people far away than we do closer to us.  By appending the modifier “methodological” to “cosmopolitanism,” I mean .. MORE

Game Theory

Pointless Wars

By Scott Sumner | Mar 25, 2025 | 4

In previous posts, I’ve criticized ambiguity in foreign policy. I cited the example of the Gulf War (1991), which occurred because a US official gave Saddam Hussein the impression that we would not object to an invasion of Kuwait. That was clearly an incorrect signal, and as a result we were drawn into a costly .. MORE

Free Markets

TikTok: Godot, Absurd Politics, and Knaves

By Pierre Lemieux | Mar 25, 2025 | 5

The TikTok saga, which will soon rebound, seems to belong to the theater of the absurd. I tell the story up to late January in the just published Spring issue of Regulation. My piece is available online in an html or pdf version. The first paragraph summarizes the absurd affair: Imagine you are watching a .. MORE

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

China’s Trade Surpluses are Not a Source of Strength

By John Phelan | Mar 24, 2025 | 2

In his new book Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation argues that, “China believes it has a mandate to rule the world,” and that it is using trade balances to accomplish this. This is an old tactic. “As far back as the Roman Empire,” Roberts argues, .. MORE

International Trade

A Rare Disagreement with Veronique de Rugy and Don Boudreaux about International Trade

By David Henderson | Mar 24, 2025 | 26

  Does purchase of imports necessarily imply that we must export?   On March 21, 2025, economist Don Boudreaux quoted, on Café Hayek, the following passage from a chapter written by Veronique de Rugy. Here it is: One of the biggest fallacies about trade is that the ultimate value of trade for a country is .. MORE

Fiscal Policy

Is fiscal policy effective?

By Scott Sumner | Mar 23, 2025 | 4

Valerie A. Ramey of the Hoover Institution has a new NBER paper that examines the impact of lump sum transfer payments on aggregate demand. Here is the abstract: This paper re-evaluates the effectiveness of temporary transfers in stimulating the macroeconomy, using evidence from four case studies. The rebirth of Keynesian stabilization policy has lingering costs .. MORE

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Bloggers David Henderson, Alberto Mingardi, Scott Sumner, Pierre Lemieux, Kevin Corcoran, and guests write on topical economics of interest to them, illuminating subjects from politics and finance, to recent films and cultural observations, to history and literature.

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Book Club

Income and Wealth distribution

The Data is Right: Americans are Prospering Economically 1

A recent essay by Eugene Ludwig published by Politico argues that despite most economic data showing a healthy US economy in 2024, things are actually really bad. He tries to convince us by providing alternative data. However, a close examination of his alternative data is unconvincing. These alternative measures are not better measures of labor .. MORE

Energy, Environment, Resources

My Weekly Reading for March 23, 2025 3

A Revolution Against Regulation by John Berlau, Law & Liberty, March 20, 2025. Excerpts: The phrase “regulation without representation” also connotes the battle that George Washington and other American patriots fought against taxation without representation. But in researching my book George Washington, Entrepreneur, I found that “regulation without representation” is more than just linguistically connected to the .. MORE

International Macroeconomics

Economic Warfare 8

In a recent interview, Tyler Cowen asked me why China doesn’t end its deflation by devaluing the yuan. I suggested that it might be due to pressure from the US.  A recent Bloomberg article provides support for that claim: In fact, the PBOC has been fending off depreciation pressure on the yuan since Trump won .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part III

By Tyler Cowen

Polities and Economics In the first article of this series, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I then turned to Homer’s treatment of comparative political regimes in the second article. In this final essay, I return briefly to The Odyssey’s polities, and then consider the lessons the heroic tale .. MORE

Thinking: Both Fundamental and Misunderstood

By Richard B. McKenzie

In his 2017 Nobel lecture, University of Chicago Professor Richard Thaler focused on how his native discipline, economics, lost its analytical way when economists founded their theories on methodological sand, meaning a premise of not just human rationality, but perfect rationality, in decision making. In his lecture, Thaler stressed the obvious, even to (neoclassical) economists: .. MORE

Freedom and the Lawmakers

By Alberto Mingardi

A Book Review of Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, by Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze.1 Liberties, Thomas Hobbes wrote, “depend on the silence of the law.” Nowadays the law is very chatty. Here are three examples from the new book by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze, Over Ruled: .. MORE

Individualism versus Racism

By Arnold Kling

Similarly, to advocate colorblindness is not to pretend you don’t notice race. To advocate colorblindness is to endorse an ethical principle: The colorblind principle: we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives. Coleman Hughes, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America1 (p. .. MORE